R.I.P. FreeHand
andy on May 17th 2007
Apparently, it’s official now: FreeHand is dead. (via Daring Fireball)
I knew it was dead back in 2003 when they laid off everyone (save a couple of people) on the core FreeHand team. They kept it alive for a while to do an updater with the few remaining people, then transitioned it off to India.
The somewhat odd thing was that the team knew FreeHand MX was going to be their last release. I remember a certain FreeHand engineer’s response to the question “why are you trying to cram so many features into this release?” as being “Because they’re not going to let us do another.” And to their credit, FreeHand MX was a return to their roots: vector based graphics program for print. At least from this observer’s perspective, it felt like FreeHand MX was the best FreeHand version in a while.
I’ve always had a soft spot for FreeHand, as I suspected most of my fellow Fireworks-ers did. After all, FreeHand and Fireworks were the only shipping products that were developed in the Texas office. Furthermore, Fireworks had been started by engineers from the FreeHand team.
Being so close in proximity, Fireworks and FreeHand often “borrowed” engineers from each other. When Fireworks was about to ship, we’d steal a couple of their engineers to help fix bugs. Conversely, FreeHand borrowed engineers from us, the Fireworks team, if they ever got behind. During the FreeHand MX cycle, I had the pleasure of spending about three months working on FreeHand, fixing bugs and bringing it up to par with the “MX” branding.
The most disappointing thing about FreeHand was Macromedia never let it live up to its full potential. After FreeHand fell behind Illustrator in market share, they pretty much ceded it. They had Dreamweaver and Flash, which were now their big money makers, and pretty much lost all interest in the print world. They kept trying to force FreeHand to be Flash, or to at least remake FreeHand for the web, instead of focusing on what FreeHand did best (print), and capturing that market.
Anyway, I digress. I’ve known for a few years that it was a dead product, but I’m still saddened to see that its official now.
P.S. Please note that FreeHand is the only product name with intercaps. i.e. Note that the F and H are capitalized in FreeHand, while in Dreamweaver and Fireworks, only the first letters are. This was a big pet peeve of the FreeHand team.
P.P.S As a technical aside, most versions of FreeHand (save the most recent ones) were written in a home grown language, that was humorously, and appropriately, called OOPS (Object Oriented Programming System). It was basically a preprocessor that generated C code that was then compiled to machine code.
Filed in Career, Personal | 22 responses so far
22 Responses to “R.I.P. FreeHand”
Michael Tsai - Blog - R.I.P. FreeHand May 17th 2007 at 01:07 pm 1
[...] Andy Finnell: [...]
Matt May 17th 2007 at 01:32 pm 2
May FreeHand rest in peace. It is going to take me some time getting used to Illustrator. Maybe I’ll just stick with Fireworks and up the resolution to 600 DPI when I need to print anything.
Matt Bendiksen
(former .des file coder)
Anonymous May 17th 2007 at 02:54 pm 3
I guess I (unfortunately) made the right decision a few years ago to switch back to illustrator.
My favorite FreeHand feature was using the command (apple) key when drawing pen tool point to move and adjust the point without releasing the mouse button.
Just a couple weeks ago I discovered a similar (although quite not as well implemented) feature in Illustrator… hold the space bar down while the mouse button is down (using the path tool).
Hugh May 17th 2007 at 02:55 pm 4
I guess I (unfortunately) made the right decision a few years ago to switch back to illustrator.
My favorite FreeHand feature was using the command (apple) key when drawing pen tool point to move and adjust the point without releasing the mouse button.
Just a couple weeks ago I discovered a similar (although quite not as well implemented) feature in Illustrator… hold the space bar down while the mouse button is down (using the path tool).
Daniel Pasco May 17th 2007 at 04:20 pm 5
I remember using Aldus Freehand 3.1 under NextStep. There is a great collection of old Freehand splashscreens here: http://www.freehandsource.com/_frames/_misc/_history/fh_splash_screens.html
Michael Klouda May 21st 2007 at 07:08 pm 6
Sad sad news. It was always an awesome app and beat the pants off of illustrator. Now there is no competition. I wil; continue to use it as long as I can.
Ian Davies May 22nd 2007 at 01:21 am 7
It *is* sad to see FreeHand die in such an undignified manner, but while its end can be attributed to Macromedia’s neglect, I can’t help feeling that its decline was down to some of the design choices that the developers made during the app’s lifetime – although I appreciate that some of these choices may have been forced upon them. I cut my Mac design teeth on Aldus FreeHand 1.0 (as well as PageMaker 2) and found the interface to be far superior to Illustrator 88 (how long did it take for Illustrator to get a grid, for Pete’s sake!) but somewhere around version 7 or 8, it seemed to be turning into some kind of bastardised office application (toolbars!!!), and was starting to fall behind Illustrator in terms of a pure print-based toolset, not to mention niceties like anti-aliased re-draw. FreeHand’s horrible (and pointless) Flash preview looked a little desperate and confirmed Macromedia’s misunderstanding of what the app really did best.
garth May 22nd 2007 at 09:13 am 8
I’m painfully migrating to Illustrator now… Saying goodbye to a very old, very good friend is hard to do. Sad. Just sad.
Tim May 22nd 2007 at 07:04 pm 9
Why I’m crying over the thought of moving to illustrator:
- you can only have one page per file
- it uses a lot more memory
- it’s has much slower rendering (on my PowerBook at least – not sure about a Rosetta Freehand vs Intel Illustrator)
Are there any other applications that can handle multiple pages like Freehand can?
Chris May 23rd 2007 at 04:35 am 10
Yesterday, while bravely deciding to start a new character design in Illustrator, I discovered for the first time that they have no satisfactory duplicate for the Paste-Inside function in FreeHand. No really. This allows me to do SO MUCH quick and useful stuff when illustrating… I actually can’t fathom that Adobe has never implemented this feature..(and please don’t tell me about masks – they don’t come close) I feel like crying.
From learning FreeHand in college at version 6, it just seemed such a logical system to from the beginning. Sure there were plenty annoying typically-Macromedia-overlooked items (like defaulting to user/documents for File>Open EVERY time), but precise and controlled drawing was never better.
Multi-page support is a BIG deal when you’ve got it. The entire South African design+ad industry used Freehand almost exclusively for publishing – only reverting to Quark/InDesign on very large page-counts. It was just easier to use.
Illustrator kills it on colour reproduction and display – but I still feel that everywhere else FreeHand still wins.
Very sad.
Lorin Rivers May 23rd 2007 at 03:13 pm 11
@Daniel Pasco: the NeXT app you refer to was Altsys Virtuoso
FreeHand is one of the apps that was intimately involved with (first as Virtuoso, then as part of the FreeHand team) while at Altsys. I miss FreeHand EVERY time I use Illustrator (which is a great program, just doesn’t work like FreeHand). And since I had some influence on how FreeHand works, it works how I think these things SHOULD work.
One HUGE difference between the two is FreeHand’s superior math as applied to path modification and point placement. To see what I mean, zoom way in on a path and click to add a point. FreeHand puts the point where you click while Illustrator puts the point NEAR where you click.
That and the easy access to positioning elements/points via a dialog using MATH (don’t know if this works in Illustrator). In FreeHand, you can put “/2″ after some value, hit enter, and lo, it’s half as wide (or what have you).
Alas.
The Altsys team was top-notch (Hi, Matt!) and I miss them.
matthew May 24th 2007 at 06:03 am 12
IMHO Freehand was always much better than Illustrator – easier to use, more useful features being just some of the things I liked about it.
Confusing UI quirks and unnecessary alerts being things I still dont like about Illustrator.
RIP.
Bob Sander-Cederlof May 27th 2007 at 08:36 pm 13
After working longer than any other programmer on FreeHand (14 years), I really do miss it. I still use FreeHand, but I hate the fact that it is running under Rosetta, and that a few features don’t work in that environment. Point of history: we used OOPS from version 3 to 8, and then switched to C++. In my opinion, the best versions were 3, 8, and 11.02 (MX). The most fun features I contributed were the arithmetic expressions in numeric fields (mentioned by Lorin above), and transparency. Another point of history: we skipped version 6, going directly from 5.5 to 7. We never knew exactly why…
Jason Holmberg Jun 21st 2007 at 10:29 am 14
FreeHand MX is still so much more useful than Illustrator CS3! FreeHand: faster, intuitive, small file sizes. I can still do things in FreeHand MX that I would not dare do in Illustrator CS3.
For example, create far more complex documents with multiple pages, tiled fills all over, master pages (huge timesaver), more complex find and replace criteria, can open, save, and print with lightning speed (Illustrator would still be starting up!).
I find comparisons between FreeHand and Illustrator a little perplexing as FreeHand is in it’s own category. It does what Illustrator does, plus. I think Illustrator would not benefit by taking on FreeHand characteristic, it would simply become even more bloated. Adobe has become a marketing machine intent on satisfying it’s stock holders and it’s bottom line. Let’s sell two programs (InDesign and Illustrator CS3) to do what FreeHand did all alone. Will someone please buy (rescue) the code from Adobe so FreeHand users can get back to work using a fast, smart tool that runs circles around Adobe bloatware.
Sean Lai Jul 17th 2007 at 01:44 am 15
Well… RIP FreeHand. Now for the switch to iLLustrator. The reason that kept me from switching to iLLustrator was that FreeHand had multi page. This keeps the number of files down. Sad to see my beloved application and MULTI PAGE go!!! I have been using it since 3.1 (in school). And have used it to create Ads, illustrations and everything else under the sun!!.
R.I.P FreeHand you will be missed
Hugh Aug 23rd 2007 at 09:24 am 16
This post and comments seems to becoming important to former Freehand users… so I’ll add that Illustrator has supported multiple pages for a while, just not very well.
http://www.sketchpad.net/multipage.htm
If you need bleed on your pages, increase the page size to account for that.
freitag Nov 28th 2007 at 06:51 am 17
freehand is the better tool. for drawing and working quick its faster and so also money saver. my illustrator collegs earn not that much like me and this is also a reason. the time i need to finish somehting, they are still drawing, because you cannot easy click thru objects, past inside, select just what you click and not the hidden crap around. thats such a pain, this programm.
i am still draw in freehand till the day is really coming and i have to switch. i hope till then also canvas, xara, corel, inscape, microsoft design have migration guides. f. adobe for this
Chris Aug 13th 2008 at 03:23 pm 18
Please, I beg you, make FreeHand reincarnate!!!
Illustrative Oct 6th 2008 at 02:34 am 19
To all: Freehand was never a direct competitor for Illustrator!
Illustrator illustration capabilities were allways superior to Freehand and Freehand pagination features were always better than Illustrator (which, as a matter of fact, neve was it’s goal).
So, quit comparing both software and start adapting to the new reality. Every freehand user should now get used to InDesign plus Illustrator and not to Illustrator solo.
ClaudeA Apr 22nd 2009 at 09:48 pm 20
Dead FreeHand? Not if I could help it!
A mac mentor to me for my first “REAL” computer(Not the toy-store, Program-As-U-Go ‘IBM PC, Make-Believe-It-Saves-Time-And-Work MicroSluff-Hacker’s_Delight-Box), handed me a 800 KB ‘High Density 3 1/2″ Floppy one day, and said, “Here’s an intro copy of a new drawing application. Play with it, use the color features on your new MacII, and tell me what you think” It was around April, 1988. (That Mac guru had single handidly written and debugged the new control code that ran on the NASA Space Shuttle Boosters, running on two redundant Perkin-Elemer computers, on his MacPro!)
I opened the small, single-floppy application, and Wah Lah! – AltSys FreeHand!
MY Oh MY! Did I have a ball! That little thing did everything Drawing, and More! Of course, Illustrator was out, and coverly hyped, as everything Adobe was, but my two mainstays for producing fun, best-of-breed graphics was PageMaker and Freehand! What a terrible blow to quality drawing and page design when Adobe mastered Aldus and then MacroMedia’s demise by underhanded, Microsoft-esque ‘Kill’ tactics.
Of course, Adobe is nothing more than a Microsoft clone with the same Pathogenic, ‘Borg’-like mastermind of ill-will toward any other software producer it deems a competitor. I sure hope and pray Adobe gets theirs!
Is there any hope Freehand may be revived by a license buyer? Or, is Adobe so ‘Borg’-minded that the ‘Entity’ would rather die than admit it is flawed at its base, and therefore continues to spawn drivel instead of suave production application code?
Bez Palmer Sep 18th 2009 at 01:51 pm 21
never say die. never.
Bez Palmer Sep 18th 2009 at 01:52 pm 22
hey, that didn’t show the url I wanted to post. here goes again: http://www.freefreehand.org